Unite Pru Section Update

Friday, April 12th, 2019

Proposed Policy Changes

You will by now have seen the Company’s announcement regarding the proposed policy and benefit changes and how they affect you. We are pleased that there are some really positive changes such as an increased flexibility in working patterns, more time off when you need it and a significantly improved family leave policy to name a few.

However, we are incredibly concerned with the proposed changes to the Redundancy policy which may have a detrimental impact on members. We also feel that the proposed changes to the Overtime policy will cause issues in some areas.

The first consultation meeting was on Thursday 11th April and meetings will be held bi-weekly until the 17th May, so there is plenty of time to get your voice heard. We will provide regular updates on where we are in the consultation and what has been agreed.

Please continue to feedback any thoughts, suggestions and concerns to Unite@prudential.co.uk.

Recruitment Incentive

If you join between now and the end of April (Prudential employees only) you will be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 voucher of your choice. Already a member? Recruit a colleague and you also get entered into the prize draw!

DB Pensions Advice

The Company are still working through the provision of advice to DB members, with the aim for this to be available towards the end of the year. We remain in dialogue with the Company around what this will look like and will pass on further details when we can.

Reading Buses Discount

This is still a work in progress and apologies that this is taking longer than anticipated. We are waiting for Reading Buses to have the website ready and as soon as it is then we will communicate what individuals need to do to obtain a discount on their bus fares.

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M&G Prudential Pensions Consultation Update – End of Formal Consultation Period

Tuesday, December 18th, 2018

Thank you to all members for completing the survey on the revised Company position from Clare Bousfield’s email on 7 December. We took on board your comments and ideas to form a revised counter proposal which was presented to Roddy during the last formal consultation meeting on Thursday 13 December.

We have agreed on a number of points however there is still work to be done on ensuring we protect the low to middle earners in the future and which has always been one of our main goals throughout the consultation process.  Although the formal consultation period is over, we will still be talking to the Company to see if we can agree a position on the outstanding items.

Once we have that final position from the Company, we will ask you whether this is acceptable or not – we will communicate this to members and aim to have members meetings in all sites where we have recognition once that final position is known and prior to any vote.

As ever, the more members we have, the stronger our collective voice. Please feel free to pass this email on to your colleagues and friends who may not be members – an application form and benefit summary are attached should non-members wish to sign up.  Please return these to either Chris Russell (4C) or Claire Williams (4B) 121 Kings Road.

If you have any questions please email Unite@prudential.co.uk or speak to your local rep.

Claire Williams
Chris Russell
Stephen Newton

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M&G Prudential Pensions Consultation – Update on Counter Proposals

Friday, December 7th, 2018

On Thursday 22nd November we formally presented our counter proposal to the Company. Roddy Thomson attended this meeting to hear our counter proposal in person and also provided the response from the Company on Thursday 6 December.

Before presenting the response from the Company, Roddy reiterated the rationale behind the changes, and made it clear that while fairness between DB and DC members is one of the drivers behind the proposals, managing both the current and future costs of the scheme was also important. While the Prudential scheme is currently in surplus, it has to be sustainable in the future too. We understand that there is a balance to be had between protecting member’s benefits and protecting the Company. While we don’t always agree with what the Company does, everyone at Unite wants Prudential to be successful too.

In order to get your thoughts on the revised proposal from the Company in a timely manner, we have created a survey for all members to complete, which has been emailed out to all current members. The full details of our counter proposal (in italics) and the Company response are as follows:

Defined Contribution

We propose that the Company contributes 8% but continues to match contributions up to 6% and not 4% as the proposal currently states. This will mean that DC members contributing 6% will receive a total Company contribution of 14%, bringing the total to 20%. This means all staff in the DC scheme will get equal benefit from the proposals and an enhanced benefit compared to the current arrangements.

We are pleased that the Company has agreed to match up to 5% from the original proposed 4% and will mean that the maximum employer contribution will be 13% from the proposed original of 12%. This ensures that every DC member will see a better retirement outcome than they do at present.

Those who currently contribute 6% will get an extra 1% contribution into their pension than they do currently, or they will have the option to drop their personal contribution to 5% and get the same total contribution into their pension that they do now.

Defined Benefit – all schemes

We propose that:

• The proposed changes are implemented after 1 April 2019 to ensure that the 2018 salary review is included.

We are satisfied that the Company has agreed to move the date from 31 March 2019 to 30 September 2019 to align more with the demerger activity, gives individuals more time to consider their options and it will also ensure that any salary increase before 30 September 2019 will be included.

PLUS

• The proposed cap is only implemented once an individual reaches 75K base salary. This protects the lower earners and ensures a reasonable retirement for the majority. The cap would be reviewed annually to ensure that inflation is taken into consideration.

The Company have agreed to protect those on the lowest salaries by setting a base salary of 30K before capping pensionable pay. While we are satisfied that this protects the lower earners, we are extremely disappointed there is no protection for the middle earners. The majority of members will still be significantly disadvantaged financially by this revised proposal. We are also frustrated that there has been no inflation proofing in this element, meaning the value of the cap will reduce in real terms over time.

AND/OR

• Rather than pensionable pay being completely frozen, increases in pensionable pay (annual salary review, promotion etc.) are capped at the higher of RPI or 50% of any salary increase. This will provide some degree of inflation protection to currently accrued benefits, reward staff and counter any retention issue while protecting the pension fund from sudden large increases in liabilities.

We are extremely disheartened that this option has not been considered and feel this is extremely short-sighted. There will be no incentive to those impacted to progress or to excel and we feel DB members will become disengaged from the whole performance management process. There is also the huge risk of experienced and valuable individuals leaving the Company.

PLUS

• All DB members to receive an ex gratia payment of £2000 towards the cost of financial advice, to help them understand how the changes affect them personally and to help decide whether to stay in the scheme or opt out.

The Company are committed to supporting provision of advice of some form to all members of the DB schemes and they are working through what this looks like at the moment, however this will not amount to £2000 per member. We are pleased that the Company agree that financial advice for individuals is important and will support this in one form or another. We will continue consulting with the Company on what form this should take.

• Matching contributions to AVCs – similar to DC scheme matching

This will not be considered by the Company. While we understand the rationale behind this, it’s still disappointing given we are a considerable distance apart on the other proposals.

• Removal of the 4% employee contribution to the M&G scheme once the pensionable cap is reached or added to AVCs

This will not be considered by the Company. Again we understand the rationale but our members will be disappointed that they still have to contribute to a scheme where there is a pensionable earnings cap in place.

• GHO/CP – current proposal for employer contributions is not acceptable – also there is concern from this population that they are being forced out of the DB scheme prematurely when the demerger has yet to happen. There is also a huge concern that these individuals have no form of collective representation.

We are satisfied that the proposed date has been moved to 30 September 2019 to align more with the demerger and whilst these individuals will be without the DB scheme we are pleased with the level of Company contributions going some way to mitigating this loss of a valuable benefit.

Original proposals: Year 1 – 16%, Year 2 – 15%, Year 3 onwards – 12% + 1% matching

Updated proposals: Year 1 – 24%, Year 2 – 16%, Year 3 – 16%, Year 4 onwards – 13%* + 1% matching

*Increase is in line with the higher proposed maximum employer contribution for DC members

THE CLOSING DATE FOR THIS SURVEY IS 11AM ON WEDNESDAY 12 DECEMBER.

The short timescale is to ensure that all your answers and comments are taken to the next consultation meeting on Thursday 13 December where we will present a revised counter proposal.

The consultation period will formally close on 15th December. Once we know the Company’s final position we will of course come back to members and ask you to vote on the final position. At that point we will consider if any further action is necessary, which could include speaking to the media or industrial action.

As ever, the more members we have, the stronger our collective voice. Please feel free to pass the link to this website on to your colleagues and friends who may not be members – should non-members wish to sign up they can click on the Join the union page . It is worth mentioning that only members will be able to vote to accept or reject the final position from the Company.

If you have any questions please email Unite@prudential.co.uk or speak to your local rep.

Claire Williams, Chris Russell & Stephen Newton

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M&G Prudential Pensions Consultation Update

Monday, November 19th, 2018

Pensions Consultation Update

Thank you to all members for your feedback throughout the consultation so far. Many of you got in touch or attended the members meetings at various locations. We took on board your feedback and ideas to form our opening position for the counter proposal which was sent out to members a couple of weeks ago. While the majority of you were in favour of our opening position, we recognise that there were a wide range of opinions and some of you felt it wasn’t a strong enough response.

We understand why some of you feel that way and want to make it clear that although we are negotiating with the Company to get the best outcome possible from the proposals, the fact that we are negotiating doesn’t imply that we accept the proposals or that we will be happy with the outcome at the end of the negotiations. We feel very strongly that this proposal as it stands is not acceptable and have communicated this at every opportunity we have had with the Company.

For the DC scheme, we want to see the Company continue to match up to 6% contributions so all DC members get an enhanced benefit from the proposals. While we want DC members to get a better retirement outcome, this shouldn’t be at the expense of their colleagues in the DB scheme. We believe it’s possible for all staff, both DB and DC, to have a comfortable retirement. However, at the moment the current proposals don’t deliver that.

Some of you have questioned why we are not going to the media or taking industrial action. While the proposals are still proposals and not confirmed, and we are still in negotiations, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to go down that route at the moment. However, those options remain on the table if the outcome from the negotiations with the Company is not satisfactory to our members.

We’d also like to point out that the reason we didn’t give specific figures in the counter proposal was that we didn’t want to give away our opening position before negotiations with the Company formally happen. Please be assured that our counter proposal is aimed to protect low and middle earners and that we won’t be accepting figures which don’t achieve that aim.

Next Steps

On Thursday 22nd November we will be formally presenting our counter proposal to the Company. Roddy Thomson will be attending the meeting to hear our counter proposal in person. We do not expect to receive an immediate response to our counter proposal, but there will be 2 further consultation meetings after this during which the negotiations will continue.

The consultation period will formally close on 15th December. Once we know the Company’s final position we will of course come back to members and ask you to vote on the final position. At that point we will consider if any further action is necessary, which could include speaking to the media or industrial action.

If you have any questions please email unite@prudential.co.uk or speak to your local rep.

Claire Williams
Chris Russell
Stephen Newton

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M&G Prudential Pensions Consultation Update

Monday, October 29th, 2018

Consultation Update

First of all, thank you to everyone who has given us their thoughts and feedback so far – whether that was in person, by email or at the member’s meeting in Reading. Many of you feel strongly about the proposals and we had a long list of points to present back to the Company at the first of the 5 formal consultation meetings last Thursday.

Please continue to send us feedback throughout the consultation process. DC members should now have received their individual letters showing the impact of the proposals and most DB members will receive their letters in the next few days (or an email to explain when it will be sent, for certain pockets of individuals with more complex calculations needed). We are interested to hear what member’s views are on their letters and on the modeller tool.

Next Steps

For those of you who aren’t based in Reading, we will be holding member’s meetings in other sites on the following dates:

Craigforth: 30th October, 3PM, PGDS Meeting Room 1, Central 2, Ground Floor
Waterhouse Square: 5th November, 11AM, Kee Room

Our next consultation meetings will be on the 6th and the 22nd November. We are aiming to have a counter proposal ready for the 22nd November and will seek member’s views on this before we present this to the Company. Many of you have already provided good ideas on what we can ask for, but please continue to send these as it helps us to shape our counter proposal. We will continue to keep you all updated regularly on our consultations with the business and what Unite is doing to support our members.

As ever, the more members we have, the stronger our collective voice. Please feel free to send a link to this website on to your colleagues and friends who may not be members.

If you have any questions or feedback on the consultation please email unite@prudential.co.uk or speak to your local rep.

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